Domestic Policy – Page 53 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake-Up Call – February 16, 2015

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” − Alvin Toffler

Today’s wake-up call is for Americans who can’t unlearn that trickle-down doesn’t work, and that voting in politicians who espouse it will prolong the nation’s agony. Do people know that the new GOP House began passing a series of deficit-hiking tax cuts that will primarily help the rich at the expense of everybody else?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee (which writes tax legislation), wants to make some previous tax breaks permanent. From HuffPo:

The House voted 272 to 142 to make permanent a number of temporary provisions that are aimed at helping businesses earning up to $2 million. The main cut, which would add $77 billion to deficits over 10 years, allows businesses to immediately write off new equipment purchases up to $500,000. Temporary versions of the measure have been passed about a dozen times before, generally as economic stimulus measures.

The GOP then passed a second tax cut, aimed at giving bigger tax breaks for charitable giving. Ryan wants even more tax cuts that would add another $300 billion to the deficit. Those may reach the House floor later this month.

Here’s the Republican strategy: Slice the elephant and eat it a bite at a time. Pass small pieces of tax legislation while ignoring the deficit impact, then when their corporate and wealthy individual patrons are taken care of, remind everyone that the deficit is the biggest, baddest enemy the economy has. Then propose budget cuts that hit the working poor and the middle class. Ryan’s current strategy can be seen here: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

If you dare try to make these things that we all agree on that need to stay in the tax code permanent, it’s ‘You’re not paying for it; it’s a budget buster; you’re being irresponsible; you’re jeopardizing tax reform.’ Process, process, process…Here’s the problem. What we’re trying to do here, we’re trying to grow the economy. We’re trying to get people back to work.

That meme will end soon. It will be replaced with: “growth is being stifled by the deficit”.

The NYT’s Upshot notes that a number of Republican governors are proposing tax increases — and in every case, the tax hike would fall most heavily on those with lower incomes, while they propose simultaneous tax cuts for business and/or the wealthy. Krugman analyzes it thusly:

If you look for an overarching theme for overall conservative policy these past four decades…It has been about making the tax-and-transfer system harsher on the poor and easier on the rich. In short, class warfare.

Class warfare. These folks keep bottling snake oil and voters keep buying it. Lowering income taxes on the wealthy doesn’t create jobs. Why would it? The focus of the GOP on cutting income taxes is solely intended to protect the rich.

Wrongo has run businesses for 35+ years and never saw taxes as an impediment. Taxes are paid out of profits, not revenue, and paying taxes means you are running a profitable business. Cutting taxes for small business can be a disincentive: Why should the owners expand the business when their net is greater, and they didn’t have to increase sales? For large corporations, tax cuts mean that people in the C-suite get richer. Nothing. Filters. Down.

Here is your Monday tune to fight the Plutocracy. “Rich Man’s War” by Steve Earle, from his 2004 album, “The Revolution Starts Now”:

And some Monday hot links:

The Westminster Dog Show starts today. Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right are attending.

Researchers are using drones and satellites to spot lost civilizations. Remote sensing technology is revealing traces of past civilizations that have been hiding in plain sight.

Lobbyists move though the revolving door back to House and Senate committees. There is a profound change taking place among Capitol Hill staff, as many GOP lawmakers are handing the keys to K Street corporate lobbyists. Public Citizen’s Paul Holman notes that Speaker John Boehner, has “encouraged new members to employ lobbyists on their personal and committee staff.”

More than 4,000 Fort Carson soldiers are heading to Kuwait, where they will become one of America’s largest ground forces in the troubled region. Did you know that the Army has kept a brigade in Kuwait since the end of the Iraq war in 2011?

Majority of public school students are now considered low-income. Another success brought to you by trickle-down economics.

Unaffordable rents here to stay say experts. They aren’t likely to ease up for at least two years, according to the latest Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 15, 2015

Big week, what with Cease Fire #2 in Ukraine, or as Moon of Alabama calls it, Minsk 2.0. Mr. Obama is bombarded by advice about how to move forward, most of it in favor of providing military aid to the government in Kiev. He is trying to balance that advice against the cornerstone of his foreign policy: “Don’t do stupid stuff.” Like some other Obama principles, this has a very high Wimp Factor, particularly if compared to GW Bush’s “bring it on”.

Then there is Mr. Obama’s strategy on Syria and dealing with ISIS. This week, he asked for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a mere six months after we began bombing them. So, a few Democrats criticized the proposal as too broad and too vague. They say it could leave the next president with enormous war-making latitude. Republicans want to go bigger.

Obama’s AUMF proposal is an invitation to Congress to offer its own expansive view of the president’s war-making authority. Can Congress do better?

Mr. Obama’s Ukraine dilemma:

Congressional chicken hawks debate the “enduring” war:

In other words, The AUMF, after Congress gets through with it, could be a disaster waiting to happen. The entire situation could devolve into another decade plus of ground war in the Middle East.

So, here in the middle of cartoons, is the anti-war song “Highwire”, by the Rolling Stones from their 1991 album, “Flashpoint”. Remember 1991, that was Gulf War 1.0. There´s only ONE reason for more war: Mo money. That’s the bottom line. Is this song on Obama’s iPhone? It should be. Lindsay, and John, this song’s for you:

Sample Lyric:
We sell ’em missiles, We sell ’em tanks
We give ’em credit, You can call up the bank
It’s just a business, You can pay us in crude
(That’s oil you know…)
You’ll love these toys, just go play out your feuds
We got no pride, don’t know whose boots to lick
We act so greedy, makes me sick sick sick
…
We walk the highwire;
Sending the men up to the front line;
Hoping they don’t catch the hell fire;
With hot guns,
And cold, cold lies.

In other news, some guy killed 3 Muslims, but nobody thinks it’s a big deal:

State’s rights vs. Gay Rights is back on the table for those who think it never left:

Jon Stewart says he’s out:

Finally, Valentine’s day covered for a lot of feelings:

Is There Risk in a Professional Military?

With the pot boiling in Ukraine, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande have spearheaded a plan to bring Russia, Ukraine along with France and Germany to a peace summit that may be held this week. That may or may not lead to anything, but, our Republican Chicken Hawk leaders in Congress have already decided it is a wimpy response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Sen. John McCain is reported by the Telegraph to have compared this initiative to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, and Adolf Hitler, which allowed Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland:

History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them…They will not be dissuaded from their brutal behavior when you fly to meet them to Moscow – just as leaders once flew to this city.

Mrs. Merkel said that she was against supplying Ukraine with lethal aid. McCain’s reaction to the leader of Germany? He summed up his reaction to Ms. Merkel’s speech with one word: “Foolishness.”

What has to happen before we stop listening to the Chicken Hawk wing in Congress? Clearly, losing wars isn’t enough for us to stop using military force to meddle in other nations’ problems. The “War on Terror” has been a transfer of national wealth to the corporatocracy. War and weapons of war are strategic US exports, peace just isn’t that profitable.

But today, let’s step back and look at the confluence of two emerging societal issues with our military, and the risks they could bring.

First, the risks implied by having a professional military have been examined by the Wrongologist. This has two effects: It divorces the rest of us from the consequences of foreign wars. Out of a population of 310 million, only about three-quarters of 1% served in Iraq or Afghanistan at any point in the post-9/11 years. It is also skewing the demographics of our military. Today’s map of the states of those in military service align closely with today’s red states:

Montana, Alaska, Florida, Wyoming, Maine and Texas now send the largest number of people per capita to the military. The states with the lowest contribution rates? Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.

What’s clear from the data is that a major national institution, the US military, now has tighter connections to some regions of the country than to others, something that wasn’t true when we had a draft. The uneven pattern of military service is not an insignificant reflection of the cultural differences that characterize different regions of our country, and this has broad ramifications for our future.

Second, according to the WaPo, we’re “optimizing” the Federal civil service for Veterans:

Obama began accelerating the hiring of veterans five years ago in response to the bleak employment prospects many service members faced after coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Veterans benefit from preferential hiring for civil service jobs under a law dating back to World War II, but the Obama administration has increased the extra credit veterans get, giving them an even greater edge in getting those jobs. The government has also set hiring goals for veterans at each agency, and managers are graded on how many they bring on board, officials said. WaPo says that the result is that veterans made up 46% of full-time hires last year, according to the Office of Personnel Management. They now represent a third of the federal workforce, holding positions throughout the Federal government.

Here is the concern: Heidi A. Urben, studied the attitudes of the officer corps, and found that about 60% said they identify with the Republican Party. But, that’s not all:

Officers who identify with the Republican Party display lower levels of trust for their civilian superiors

The Wrongologist is pro-military. He served during the Vietnam era. Yet, is there a perfect storm brewing?

• We have an all-professional military that doesn’t really trust civilian superiors.
• Those who leave the professional military are staffing one-third of our federal workforce.

Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a retired Air Force major general at the Duke Law Schools says: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I think there is a strong sense in the military that it is a better society than the one it serves…In the generation coming up, we’ve got lieutenants and majors who had been the warrior-kings in their little outposts…They were literally making life-or-death decisions. You can’t take that generation and say, ‘You can be seen and not heard.’

The Wrongologist has no idea what the effects of having veterans become a majority of our federal employees will be, but the active duty and the retired military are part of a fraternity. They share common training and values. They share political views, they come from the same states.

It is not hard to imagine that there is an iceberg straight ahead that we are ignoring.

And as the captain said on the Titanic: “Iceberg? What iceberg?”

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 8, 2015

Today is Sunday, the day when Christians worship their God. So, it’s appropriate that we focus on the reaction of certain right-wing Christians to Mr. Obama’s talk at the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday. He spoke for about thirty minutes but the part of the speech that the right wing are focusing on is when he brought up the Crusades: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Humanity has been grappling with these questions [violence in the name of religion] throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

The righties are complaining that Obama is saying that Christianity is equivalent to ISIS. Which of course, isn’t what he said. He was saying that Islam was not ISIS, and demonizing Islam for the sins of ISIS is hypocritical, because, among other reasons, Christians have plenty to answer for, given their historical actions in the name of religion. So, conservatives are slamming Obama for not equating terrorism with Islam. For example, Jim Gilmore, former Republican governor of Virginia said:

He has offended every believing Christian in the United States…Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.

The blog Red State said:

Barack Obama, leftwing community organizer and closet theologian, used the National Prayer Breakfast to throw a tu quoque at anyone critical of Islam while continuing to fancy himself as the Pope of Islam

When did the clearly dominant religion in the US develop a glass jaw?

Mr. Obama has attended this prayer breakfast each year to speak about his faith. And the things he said this time were things that Christians agree with: that at times, the religion has been perverted, that we have to walk humbly before God, that God’s purposes are mysterious to us. These thoughts are accepted by every Christian. And so what he said was normal, a recognition of historical fact, and an urge towards some level of perspective and humility.

But what Obama says is never enough for these crypto-Christians. And as for American’s Christian conservatives, they love, love, love violent retribution. One example is their love affair with torture. Do you need the reminder that Sarah Palin said about waterboarding:

that’s how we baptize terrorists

Here is your OTHER approved form of Sunday worship:

But today, we have as many deniers as believers:

Mr. Christie, a denier, needs a different vaccine:

Mr. Romney’s exit creates a stampede:

Bibi gets to address Congress, but teleprompter has ideas:

Brian Williams not always honest:

Chris Christie: Pro-Life, But Anti-Vaxx

Here is some humor for your Wednesday:

Chris Christie: "Parents should choose whether their child spreads deadly infectious diseases to all their classmates, not the government."

— Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat) February 3, 2015

There's no vaccine against stupid.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) February 3, 2015

Say hello to the triumph of ignorance, fear, and science denial. And along come the Republican politicos, starting with Governor Chris Christie, who was quoted by the NYT:

It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well.

But, here is what Mr. Christie said in reference to a much less deadly disease, Ebola:

All these contagious diseases must be contained and killed dead in their tracks.

Christie quarantined the Ebola nurse, Kaci Hickox against her will near Newark Airport after he ordered 21-day mandatory quarantines for all returning health workers.

What’s different other than the politics?

When the Wrongologist’s kids were in school, if your kid wasn’t vaccinated, they weren’t allowed to go to school. Period. That may have been the single largest reason that measles was declared virtually eradicated in 2000. Now, because of the anti-vaccine movement, the fight against deadly (and preventable) childhood diseases has taken a huge step backwards.

Here’s the reality: We’re all in this together, so your refusal to vaccinate your children has greater ramifications than just your narrow self-interest and magical thinking. The truth is that vaccination ISN’T a personal decision; it’s a social obligation. Maybe Republicans believe we don’t have a society, that America is simply a collection of individuals who can make any damn choice they please, because, liberty!

That pernicious belief must be stamped out if the nation is to survive.

So, why is Christie parsing this? This isn’t something Mr. Christie needs to hedge about. You simply say, the people who are choosing not to vaccinate their children based on some Internet BS or the spouting of some half-wit television person are endangering your children and mine. Go get the shots. Period.

The refusal by the anti-vaxx community to meet its obligations to preserving the public’s health is irresponsible, and arguably borderline criminal. This is what happens when many in the country believe demonstrably false things and then, emboldened by weasel politicians, cherry-pick the science to fit their prejudices.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 1, 2015

The Super Bowl is today. There will be queso con chorizo and enchiladas at the Mansion of Wrong.

It was a busy week. Obama has bromance with India’s Prime Minister Modi, then flies to the funeral of the Saudi King. The Republican beauty pageant began; we learned that the Koch brothers plan to spend nearly $900 million to elect Republicans in 2016, but Mitt isn’t running. Mitt didn’t leave gracefully, but perhaps he showed the self-awareness to avoid further indignities. He signed off calling for an “end to the grip of poverty,” which, considering the source, should be received by most with something between a snort and a laugh.

The Koch brothers are almost their own political party. The biggest contenders for the Republican nomination went to Palm Springs for their audition with the Koch funding team. This means if you are a candidate, you will shade your story and beliefs to please the Kochs and their fellow travelers. That means you are going to spend more thought about getting and keeping your Koch money, and less time thinking about which policies matter. Or maybe, its just birds of a feather.

Choose your poison at the SB:

Thank you, Supreme Court, politics is now forever in your debt, and democracy has left the building:

We will soon leave the snow season for the money season:

Mitt decides not to be the next Adlai Stevenson:

Mr. Obama visits Saudi Arabia, makes sales call:

When will they ever learn?

Your word for the week: Agnotology.

Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.

Does this concept bring to mind any particular group?

Friday Music Break – January 30, 2015

“We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.” – Thomas Picketty

Today’s music has a populist message designed to help you fight the Plutocracy over the weekend. It is “First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin”, written and performed by Leonard Cohen. The song was originally recorded by Jennifer Warnes for her 1987 album, “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Cohen recorded it a year later for his album, “I’m Your Man”. This version was recorded in London in 2009:

It has become an occasional anthem for Syriza, the Greek Populist Party that just won power on an anti-austerity, anti-European Union platform. In Greece, it was played with the words, “First we take Athens, then we take Madrid!”

Sample Lyrics:
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

You loved me as a loser,
but now you’re worried that I just might win,
You knew the way you could have stopped me,
but you never had the discipline,
So many nights I prayed for this,
to let my work begin.

See you on Sunday

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 25, 2015

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Frederick Nietzsche

It is clear that we have entered what may be the last years when we can delay or avoid entirely, the decline of America as the world’s indispensable nation. What is unclear is what the US electorate thought they were voting for last November. Polls have repeatedly shown that the public favors the Democrats’ policy proposals, but increasingly, votes for Republicans. So polarization has ensued, and DC has already turned its focus to the NEXT election, even though we just had one.

Everything between here and there will be simply BS and time filling. Are we to lose another two years? The rest of the world will not be waiting for us.

The Republicans had many responses to the SOTU:

Then there was the official Republican response:
BTW: Don’t you wear the plastic bags INSIDE your shoes to keep the water out? Shoe condoms? Really?

Yet, there are always a few things we all agree with:

With the unfathomable House and Senate votes that have already been taken, is there an image problem?

Last week, the pro-life peeps marched in DC, and the R’s in a show of support, tried a vote on abortion:

Could this be the way the logjam ends in DC?

Friday Music Break – January 23, 2015

What is the real State of the Union? Polarized, now, and for the rest of our lifetimes.

With that in mind, today is a good day to chill, and here a few songs to promote chillin’. We start with the very funny song “I’ll Never Smoke Weed with Willie Again” during Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday celebration. It is sung by Toby Keith and Scott Emerick, with Willie Nelson laughing in the background:

Sample Lyrics:
I always heard that his herb was top shelf
I just could not wait to find out for myself
Don’t knock it ’til you tried it, well, I tried it my friend
And I’ll never smoke weed with Willie again

For all you old hippies out there, here is “Willin” and “Don’t Bogart that Joint” by Little Feat, that is, the Lowell George-led version of Little Feat, not the several incarnations of bands using that name that have been working since Lowell died in 1979. These two tracks were recorded at Lisner Auditorium on the campus of George Washington University in August of 1977:

For the Wrongologist’s (not substantial) money, Waiting for Columbus is one of the greatest live recordings. However, it is not completely a “live” album. It doesn’t take anything away from WFC or Little Feat, but there were overdubs done later, prior to release, to enhance the sound on a few cuts.

If you don’t know this album, buy the 2002 Deluxe Edition CD, you will never be sorry. Don’t buy the version on Amazon, it only has 20 songs, the actual deluxe CD has 27.

We can’t end without another Waiting for Columbus tune. WFC was recorded in London in addition to Washington DC. There were 4 dates in London. Here is “Dixie Chicken”, recorded at London’s Rainbow Theater on August 3 & 4, 1977:

That’s Bill Payne on the piano solo. Here, Little Feat combined jazz, honkytonk, swing, ragtime and dixie into one great song.

WFC is a go-to experience on any road trip for the Wrongologist.

See you on Sunday.

Politics Is Usually Not The Answer

For the first time in his six SOTU speeches, the president’s economic message on Tuesday was not: “yes, the economy’s weak, but it’s getting stronger” or “we’re on the right path, but we’re not out of the woods.” Instead, he called 2014:

A breakthrough year for America, [as] our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before; more of our people are insured than ever before; we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years.

He added: “this is good news, people!” What President Obama meant was, now that we’ve have sustained economic growth in place, we need to start talking about the policy agenda that will give all of us a chance to benefit from that growth.

But the spin afterwards spoke about things like “leadership”, “redistribution” and “class warfare” that the many, many GOP presidential candidates and their surrogates will parse incessantly, without offering any solutions for our economic future, or those domestic problems that continue to dog America.

Speaking of politics that have not led to solutions, Mr. Obama spoke of his opening with Cuba. Here is what he said:

In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date. When what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new. And our shift in Cuba policy has the potential to end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere. It removes a phony excuse for restrictions in Cuba. It stands up for democratic values, and extends the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. And this year, Congress should begin the work of ending the embargo.

But anti-Castro politics, mostly fostered by Republicans, have embargoed some things that have potentially really cost American citizens. No, it’s not Cuban Rum. The Cubans have developed a drug called Heberprot-P, that appears to be very effective in curing advanced foot ulcers in people with diabetes. It could have been licensed for US clinical trials since 2007. It is patented in over 30 nations, including here in the US, and in the European Union.

Most of us have never heard of Heberprot-P. The drug uses a form of epidermal growth factor (EGF) to help regrow cells lost to diabetic foot ulcers (DFU). According to the American Diabetes Association, DFU causes about 73,000 non-traumatic lower-limb amputations in US adults aged 20 years or older who were diagnosed with diabetes.

The idea behind Heberprot was developed in St. Louis years before the embargo by biochemist Stanley Cohen and neurophysiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini. They received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries of epidermal and nerve growth factors. They discovered that protein recumbent epidermal growth factor stimulates cell growth. The Cubans applied that idea to foot ulcers.

Because of the embargo, we haven’t brought the drug to the US for clinical trials. But, Mr. Obama could immediately license the import of Heberprot-P without waiting for Congress to debate the end of the embargo.

In fact, US scientists heard first hand from Cuban scientists about the Heberprot-P at two forums held here in 2014. One of them was a meeting of the Conference on the Management of Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFCON, 2014), the largest meeting of US professionals treating patients with this ailment.

So, despite the politics and the hurdles presented by Cuban-American politicians, the President could license the importation of the drug for study and use in clinical trials, followed by an application for approval of Heberprot-P by the Food and Drug Administration. It could then be researched further by American scientists that wish to test different cell growth rates using incubation equipment and see if this treatment could in fact be applied to helping the regrowth of lost cells in humans due to DFU.

In fact, there is a precedent. In July, 2004, the federal government permitted a California biotechnology company to license three experimental cancer drugs from Cuba. That required permission from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

At the time, a State Department spokesperson said that an exception had been made because of the life-saving potential of the experimental Cuban drugs. A government condition of permitting the license required that payments to Cuba during the developmental phase were to be in goods like food or medical supplies, which are permitted under the embargo, while there are rules against providing the Cuban government with foreign currency. In 2004, the ruling was that after drugs reach the market, payments could be half in cash.

Many Americans are mutilated or die every year because of diabetic foot ulcers. First the toes go, then the feet, and later the legs. Death often follows.

And this drug could have been available for trials since 2007 and wasn’t, because of politics?

We should ask Republican politicians why. Maybe the Republican agenda has been helped by calling the Castro brothers sponsors of state terrorism, but it hasn’t done anything to help people with diabetes in the US keep their toes and feet.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Domestic Policy